That’s good news for people who enjoy the freedom of using the device they own in the way they want.
Having (alt store) presence in Australia, Brazil, EU and Japan is in fact more than enough for many indies - one can even begin to imagine ignoring the US as a region.
I’ve been thinking about open source replacements of proprietary companion apps. It’s easy enough to reverse engineer Bluetooth protocols now, but you can’t run these in websites. Putting stuff on the App Store is too expensive but sideloading could be viable.
Ages ago there was this term "Device Neutrality", first introduced in 2011 at the European Parliament and later incorporated in the Digital Markets Act
You actually can use most bluetooth apis in websites on most browsers outside of iOS [0]. I used recently this tool [1] to program my baofeng radio and the bluetooth aspect of it worked great, but I did end up having to reverse engineer aspects of the payload to get it encode and decode all the channel configuration correctly.
> one can even begin to imagine ignoring the US as a region
As someone from that region, this is probably a good idea for all parties, right now. I'm not fond of our current trajectory, and the outside pressure to change isn't sounding unreasonable.
This is actually outdated information. The inflection has already happened and the split is 40% Asia and 40% North America with NA losing ground over the last years and Asia gaining that ground.
Combine with that other markets also getting bigger like South America.
The reality is that NA had their smartphone / mobile boom already and the rest of the world is still catching up. There are more smartphones, apps, features, services, etc. to be gained by selling to the massive influx of new customers versus trying to cater to the old audience of North America.
My experience is that while other regions have a lot of users, my revenue is still 90% from the US for a location-agnostic product.
In the vast majority of cases, Asia and SA won't touch your product if you don't have deep familiarity with their markets, their idiosyncrasies and have a competitive business model there. Getting folks in these markets to pay isn't easy, friend.
And that's why we keep having these conversations in English on a US site about products made by US companies.
It's terrible news for anyone who has some responsibility for the security of environments in which these devices are used.
Right now we have a relatively high confidence that as long as the devices are not jailbroken and are kept up to date they are relatively secure.
What this change means for people like me is that either there is some capability to detect whether third-party app stores are in use on a device and we will set a policy that disallows anyone using such things from accessing company data/services, or we have to lock out the devices altogether.
Surely it's possible to treat phones the same way as computers in corporate settings? Normal users aren't usually allowed to install whatever they want on their work PC, so why their work phone?
How many people bring their own laptop to work? (ignoring self-employed people and the like which this line of thinking really doesn't apply to) Phones should be treated the same way.
Personal devices shouldn't be used for work purposes to begin with. If work has security requirements regarding what phone and what condition it is in, they better be supplying their own phone to ensure those requirements are satisfied.
Vast majority of the people don't have the need for a separate work phone. But they benefit from accessing their work email, Teams chat, calendar, etc. from their phones.
If work wants to be picky about what devices can access those things, but still want their employees to do so, they should provide devices for that. If they don't, well, then the employees get to not do work during non-work hours.
The entire world doesn't want their devices that they bought and own to be beholden to the corporate whims of Apple or Google just so your job can be easier.
The ruling doesn't ask Apple to get rid of app sandboxing. The ruling explicitly notes this:
> Moreover, because iOS apps are sandboxed, as implemented in other jurisdictions, apps available through alternative distribution will be sandboxed, which further strengthens security and reduces the likelihood that any app will compromise other apps [...]
Or your company buys phones for its employees and allows only those work phones on its networks. I understand that this is an extra cost and phones are maybe more expensive than some laptops good enough for working with Office.
"Billions of consumer phones must be locked down because our IT department is completely incompetent and incapable of providing locked down work devices"
Uhm, disallowing third-party stores, sure, but you draw a line that allows a non-jailbroken and updated device to be able to access company data? How is the lack of third-party app stores gonna prevent someone from sending sensitive data through the Mail app or to iCloud? Shouldn't company devices be managed with MDM to begin with?
It also allows it to be much worse too. I can't wait to do tech support for my grandparents that followed the instructions to install ScamAppStore to install an app they saw on a Facebook ad.
I do tech support for my parents that both use Android. Haven't had a sideloading incident once in the decade+ they've used it (although I did show my dad NewPipe, which he uses constantly now).
> Subject to orders 12 and 13, the first respondent must do all things necessary (including procuring any act of any related corporation) to ensure that users of iOS devices can discover, obtain and update iOS apps, including alternative app stores, via distribution channels other than the App Store (including via direct download and alternative app stores) provided those iOS apps have undergone an automated scan for genuine security and/or privacy reasons and been notarised by Apple or a suitably qualified third party (Alternative Distribution Channels), and that app developers can distribute and update such iOS apps to such users via Alternative Distribution Channels, including but not limited to providing access to all tools and APIs (including software development kits):
So notarisation is still on the table? I won't be surprised to see Apple using that for all the loophole its worth.
That is, unless that's already covered by the ruling and I just didn't see it while skimming. Maybe the Alternative Distribution Channels is that, although it doesn't seem to be defined beyond 'a suitably qualified third party', which I'm sure Apple would love to say is no-one.
Still, the rest of it is very nice. The altstores for Apple have seemed kind of useless to me just through either costing money to use or needing to connect to a PC every so often, or needing to perform some other stupid dance. If we can get the F-Droid of iOS and an option to just download and install an IPA if I want to, then I'll be pretty happy.
See order 5(h) that sets out the limited conditions by which Apple can automatically remove, disable or block an application that has already been distributed and installed on a device. Importantly for Australia this list includes 5(h)(iii) for section 128 of the Online Safety Act 2021 and the receipt of an "app removal notice" from the Australian Government.[1] You can ignore the "subject to orders 12 and 13" as that just addresses timing of the orders coming into effect. An order in this judgement is anything numbered under the heading "AND THE COURT ORDERS THAT:" and preceding the heading "REASONS FOR JUDGMENT".
The nuance is the Online Safety Act 2021 does not have an "app distribution blocking notice" or "app blacklisting notice" or similar, therefore, I think the effect is Apple can't stop a Russian website distributing apps to Australian users who seek them out, but Apple can use a received "app removal notice" to then blacklist the relevant app on existing devices?
> I won't be surprised to see Apple using that for all the loophole its worth.
That has already happened on several occasions (Apple refusing notarisation, since you still need to be a member of their Developer Program thus subject to their ToS and all the crazy in it).
Hopefully, the next revision of EU's DMA and equivalent in other countries will close the loop hole.
Or maybe... John Ternus would wake up one day and decide to be a better human being and just fix this globally for everyone.
Seems like sideloaded apps will require notorisation from Apple and some form of automated security/privacy scanning (plus a system for authorising alt stores to do the same).
Payment fees for App Store apps seem to be affected in section 9(c) - I have trouble parsing it but it seem to eliminate any fee difference between purchasing physical goods through an app (currently 0% fee) and digital goods (currently 30% fee). There's a carve out for "reasonable costs" for hosting and distributing the digital goods - this could be sensible in certain scenarios (like Netflix asking Apple to a free CDN for them).
We'll see how much malicious compliance the above produces. Otherwise I'm feeling like a happy Aussie today :)
As an Aussie, I hope Apple maliciously complies to the greatest extent possible until the same rules are applied to all companies equally. And I mean ALL. Every single computing platform with any kind of loadable software developed by any third party should be similarly unlocked.
If the rules are good enough for Apple, they are good enough for everyone.
This might sound like a defence of Apple, and to a small extent it is. But actually, I’m being deadly serious. I think the world would be a better place if these rules applied to everyone.
“But poor Nintendo” rings as hollow to me as “but poor Apple” probably does to you.
I think the legal side of it is, once a precedent like this stands, the cost of going after others reduces significantly. One could argue Nintendo created a closed market for Nintendo apps and abuses their monopoly power in a completely analogous way, and ask the court for completely analogous recourse.
A _better_ solution though would be legislation around freedoms and rights for general purpose computing on any general purpose computing device, rights to repair owned hardware, rights to "own" software paid for, etc. Then you wouldn't need to rely on any monopoly-abuse arguments. The powers that be would have to give up their control (e.g. governments like the notorization thing because they can ask Apple to stop something they consider harmful from being distributed easily, but the requirement to seek notorization clashes with what I perceive as my right to run any program I want on any computer I own) and to be fair having some way to protect the (non-techie) public from malicious software is a reasonable goal (where we could argue over different solutions).
I'd be happier if Apple willingly complied, and the rest of the companies were brought to heel next. It sets a cleaner precedent for smaller antitrust cases.
Beach's ruling determined that Apple should not be allowed to block, as a policy, competing app stores. Beach also recognised that Apple's commission is not merely a payment-processing fee, but a means of recovering its investment in the broader ecosystem, including developer tools, security, app verification, distribution infrastructure and intellectual property. He also acknowledged Apple's entitlement to a commercial return on those investments.
The question remains how Apple can get the commercial return which Beach acknowledged Apple is entitled to, given the weirdly arbitrary restrictions defined in Beach's order. This contradiction is left unresolved and is begging for an obvious overturn on appeal.
I personally have no problem with competing stores, so long as they're not just a mechanism for redirecting money previously going to Apple into their own pocket. But this ruling doesn't establish competition, because there's not competitive reason for alternative stores to exist except to avoid fees which Beach acknowledged Apple is entitled to.
> There's a carve out for "reasonable costs" for hosting and distributing the digital goods - this could be sensible in certain scenarios (like Netflix asking Apple to a free CDN for them).
The way this should work is that Apple can charge whatever they want for whatever they want but then nobody can be required to use them instead of a third party. So if they want to charge 30% to distribute your app then that's fine, but then you have the option of having someone else distribute your app to customers with iOS (or hosting it yourself), in which case Apple gets 0%.
At which point they might want to get e.g. 5% of something rather than 30% of nothing.
Yep, the ruling seems to cover exactly that plus stopping Apple themselves treating in-app purchases and subscriptions (from actual App store apps) differently to how they currently approach physical goods (which are already allowed by Apple to go via other payment channels without any fee, or a developer might choose to go via ApplePay with possibly slightly less effort).
I agree, the end effect should be them charging say "5% of something" and the developer choosing not to bother thinking about external payments. They seem to avoiding this outcome on purpose though. (I dare say Apple might prefer to chase advertising revenue from the app store rather than accept small fees, but they'd risk trashing their own garden).
The goal is not to make them argue about it, it's to make them actually subject to competitive pressure so that if they try to charge an unreasonable fee, it's really easy for anyone to go with someone else.
Just a warning to any publishers who might want to force me into an alternative app store - I will stop using your app long before I'll install another app store.
I have a reasonable amount of confidence in Apple's due diligence around vetting apps on the app store. I can't think of another major brand that I would trust on this matter.
>I have a reasonable amount of confidence in Apple's due diligence around vetting apps on the app store. I can't think of another major brand that I would trust on this matter.
You should try submitting an app on the app store just to prove to yourself how not true this is. Even in the AI era. They do vet, but it's not as substantial as you think
Maybe I missed the news on this but I have not heard of truly malicious apps on the app store (talking bricking your phone, exfiltrating your data or something of that severity).
There's a word for the way you think about the entity which is holding your phone hostage: Stockholm Syndrome. You seem to think that your can appease the fruit factory by defending their racket but you're mistaken, they'll just fleece you harder.
It makes sense in that someone has rightfully pointed out there’s a prison and the door might be opening soon, allowing us to leave and the response was essentially “well, it’s safe here, who else could we reasonably trust?”
How is that unlike developing an attachment to/sympathy for your captors?
> I will stop using your app long before I'll install another app store.
m'okay bye.
Seriously, what are you trying to accomplish by saying this? Do you think you or app developers have any leverage with Apple? A corp that's the size of several countries?
Not OP, but I get where they're coming from. I see how for some people, having a phone where the only (reasonable) path to getting an app is to have it vetted is a feature, not a bug. It's not "restricting my choices", it's "restricting what developers can do to me".
I don't have a super strong opinion here. I lean a bit more towards thinking that the current status is better than the alternative: Based on what I see in news / tech news / in general it sounds like "the price of apps"* is less of a problem in today's day and age than "app _X_ tracks every thing you do and your location, sells that data and now [elections are skewed | supermarkets implement dynamic pricing | ICE can track you], etc".
* I am aware that is more than "price of apps", I'm simplifying a bit here. I'm not a fan of Apple imposing restrictions on how you can purchase stuff.
Epic will still be dissatisfied. They were dissatisfied when they had their android store. It didn’t turn out like they thought. They thought they were gonna be making bank but most people did not flock to their store.
You are in fact literally required to purchase an Apple or Google phone to participate in an OECD economy. Your employer will require it, your government will require it. Increasingly, your banks and doctors will require it. Unless you're telling people to live off the grid? But maybe we can have something between the two extremes of living in a fucking jungle or submitting to an enforced duopoly wherein two companies control what billions of people can publish and take a 30% cut from it all? No? That too unreasonable for you?
Weird reaction. I can't think of any publishers of Android apps that have forced users onto a different app store. Even in cases where they have an APK available for direct download, there's usually still a Play Store option.
F-Droid on android was a far better app store than Google's.
An Open Source / Free Software Only app store on iOS which only allowed reproducible builds would be so much better than the iOS app store for security.
I would trust that so much more, and I feel like anyone even marginally technically competent would too.
If Mozilla made its own app distribution platform for Firefox and Thunderbird, I'd also naturally trust that.
At this point, I do not trust apple at all. The iOS app store sells ads. If I search for my bank's name, a different bank comes up as the first result.
If you search 'Ledger Bitcoin Wallet' on the app store, someone who pays more for the ad slot can present you with a crypto stealer (which has happened in the past! the app store review didn't catch that obvious bullshit).
The app store's "due diligence" and "vetting" all went out the window as soon as they started selling the top search spot to the highest bidder.
Good news! Apple is still permitted to vet apps for security reasons, even when they are distributed on alternative app stores. So you can keep downloading apps with confidence, wherever they come from.
I never understand when people make this argument. Do you just blindly install apps from the app store? Don't you know what you're downloading? Why do you rely any third party like Apple to do "due diligence" in the act of you installing software on your computer?
Because its not realistic to do actual proper due diligence for this. Take the PHP fix from yesterday, I did not read the source of what they actually fixed, nor do i have the ability to understand it. I still installed it in my org because I have trust in the system that created it.
Its similar with apple, I have the reasonable assumption that whatever I install from the app store is not going to brick my phone, steal my data or be a giant resource hog that just runs in the background.
You trusted the PHP fix from the PHP devs because you trust PHP. That's my point. You didn't wait for Apple to bless it. It's not reasonable to consider Apple to be a universal arbiter of software.
I'm sure the vast majority of app developers are very much uninterested in leaving Apple's App Store if they have any interest in capturing an audience of any size, unless they themselves are a giant corp and have a Fortnite or similar on their hands.
However, the looming threat of that being possible, and Apple not being able to block it from happening, will hopefully prevent Apple from making the App Store experience worse than it needs to be, both from the user's perspective, and the publisher's perspective.
What if Steam launched on iOS? Especially with AI being able to decompile, it might actually more feasible in 2026 to thoroughly scan even fully compiled binaries
The Federal Court is already Australia's second-highest court. The only higher level is the High Court, and like the US Supreme Court, they're quite picky about what appeals they'll accept.
> Usually a Full Court of three or more Judges sitting together will hear an appeal. However, appeals from a judgment of a Judge of the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia or from a Court of summary jurisdiction will be heard by a single judge unless a judge considers that it is appropriate for the appeal to be heard by a Full Court.
They’re not that picky. The Australian banks lost their case against Apple, when it came to Apple Pay and their collusion to stop it. So of course Apple is going to appeal to the highest court.
They will, but they've already been through this in the EU. They will take several years to drag this out through courts and "negotiations" until they comply so maliciously you'll need a new term for that.
> until they comply so maliciously you'll need a new term for that.
The ruling is pretty clear that malicious compliance won't be accepted. There's a whole section on all the things apple isn't allowed to do to get around this ruling, starting with this:
> the first respondent must not (including by procuring any act of any related corporation) prohibit, prevent or take any action (including by imposing a fee or condition) which is likely to hinder users of iOS devices from discovering, obtaining and updating iOS apps, including alternative app stores, via Alternative Distribution Channels, or from using iOS apps obtained in that way on iOS devices, or prohibit, prevent or take any action (including by imposing a fee or condition) which is likely to hinder app developers from distributing and updating such iOS apps to such users via Alternative Distribution Channels, ...
"Apple has lost major, high-profile appeals before the European Union courts in two primary landmark matters, while also winning an earlier round in one of them."
I wonder if this will result in a situation where Apple will find some other means of getting paid for all of the money they spend on producing the software that allows access to their hardware. How else do you develop apps for iOS, even if you create your own store, without directly using the software and tooling they provide?
> How else do you develop apps for iOS, even if you create your own store, without directly using the software and tooling they provide?
Who do you suppose is the primary entity responsible for making it so that you haven't been able to do this on iOS using the variety of open source and proprietary third party development tools that people use on platforms like Linux and Windows?
I'm ok for Apple to allow (or be forced to allow) users to install alternative operating systems. We all use iOS not because it's great but because there is no other choice.
Of course, this will never happen, it's Apple... they can't even spell competition let alone "libre".
You can’t. This is just a freeloader company who will not be satisfied because most people are not going to use their store, it didn’t happen on Android the way they wanted it, and it’s not gonna happen now.
The software is absolutely terrible, I absolutely don't want to pay for that, it's not worth any money. Xcode jank and its lacking documentation looks like we're still stuck in 2005.
If they want to charge for an SDK, they have to invest some money to make it feel that we're paying for something.
I feel incredibly proud do to be Australian right now.
I like how the court’s declarations are punchy, factual, and dare I say obvious. I’d suggest giving section 1 a read.
There’s going to be a million “what ifs”, from walled gardens to security to ‘you don’t have to use iOS’, but it’s blatantly obvious this is all about competition and money.
It’s anticompetitive, illegal, and the remedy is to cease these anticompetitive actions.
You've only posted the same comment 5 times now, do you enjoy writing preeminently ignorable nonsense?
The ruling is consistent with Australian law and precedented in European and Japanese courts. Nothing about this is payback or suggests unfair or biased ruling. You need a better coping mechanism if your only outlet for disagreement is pearl-clutching on an American tech website.
You did this a week ago in the other Apple thread, writing indefensible nonsense about Apple manufacturing their own memory fabs. Do you have any factual contribution to make to these conversations? If you're going to write hysterical nonsense, can you at least defend it in the replies so we understand your perspective?
It's disappointing to see this is only for iPhone. Hopefully this is the first step towards having the right to deploy what we want on iPad, TV, Watch, and Vision Pro, and without requiring special enterprise entitlements to unlock access to certain features, which should be driven by user consent instead of Apple consent.
> "Subject to orders 12 and 13, [Apple] must do all things necessary (including procuring any act of any related corporation) to ensure that users of iOS devices can discover, obtain and update iOS apps, including alternative app stores, via distribution channels other than the App Store (including via direct download and alternative app stores)..."
Good. Apple can't say "I don't like your app because [vague reasons], it's not allowed on the App Store so nobody can use it".
> "...provided those iOS apps have undergone an automated scan for genuine security and/or privacy reasons and been notarised by Apple or a suitably qualified third party (Alternative Distribution Channels)..."
Seems bad, can't Apple say "I refuse to notarise your app for 'security' [vague reasons]"?
Or does the cryptographic signatures Apple presumably gives an app uploaded to the App Store count as "notarised"? I'm picturing the following situation:
- January: Alice uploads to App Store, Apple produces a signature S of H(app), Alice downloads the bytes of S
- February: Apple says "Alice we're kicking your app out of the App Store for [vague reasons]"
- March: Alice says "Fine, then I'll put it on Bob's Alternate Appstore." Apple says "I refuse to 'notarise' your app for 'security' [vague reasons]". Alice then uploads her app to Bob's Alternate Appstore along with Apple's cryptographic signature S that Bob authenticates against a known Apple public key.
Now there are two contradictory narratives about whether Alice is notarised.
- (a) Apple says "I refuse to notarise Alice, therefore she's not notarised."
- (b) Alice says "S exists, here are its bytes, the hash and signature validate, therefore I'm notarised."
Presumably if (a) wins, Apple would be within its legal rights to block Bob's Alternate Appstore because it allowed Alice to upload an un-notarised app. This would make the whole ruling effectively toothless, because Apple still gets a veto, the veto is just renamed to "notarisation."
If (b) wins, it provides clarity for developers. In this world signing an app is effectively a no-takesies-backsies moment: Once S is published, Alice knows for sure she's notarised forever. Apple won't later be able to block Alice on a whim by hiding behind a vague "security" excuse.
Which narrative wins?
If (b) wins it seems like there's an opportunity here to create tooling for Alice to pull the S for her app on the app store as soon as it's approved. Maybe someone should spin up an observatory to constantly download S for every app as it's uploaded to the app store -- the observatory would be able to rescue Alice if she didn't have the foresight to download S herself before Apple banned her app.
EU got there first, and Apple sabotaged the entire process anyway. Look at the requirements for setting up and running an alt store that Apple imposes.
Read the ruling. It's clearly written with Apple's EU schenanagens in mind:
> 4. Subject to orders 12 and 13, the first respondent must not (including by procuring any act of any related corporation) prohibit, prevent or take any action (including by imposing a fee or condition) which is likely to hinder users of iOS devices from discovering, obtaining and updating iOS apps, including alternative app stores, via Alternative Distribution Channels, or from using iOS apps obtained in that way on iOS devices, or prohibit, prevent or take any action (including by imposing a fee or condition) which is likely to hinder app developers from distributing and updating such iOS apps to such users via Alternative Distribution Channels, including but not limited to: ..
Then it goes on to list all the ways Apple isn't allowed to quietly break 3rd party app stores - like, they can't make developers or users pay money to use them. They can't restrict which APIs are allowed to be used via 3rd party stores. They can't require that people who publish apps in the official store remove their apps from 3rd party stores. And so on.
They could switch to a different mechanism for app stores every month. Force app stores to be rewritten every month to use a procedurally generated new API, developers have to re-apply every month, and users have to go through the laborious setup process every month. And every time, present it with a cheerful message: "To bring a childlike sense of wonder to our customers, today we launch the new improved 3rd party app store API"
Yes, because courts are made of stupid people who won’t see right through this. IANAL, but from what I read, “well, technically…” often does not amuse a judge.
It does take away time and resources. Because each round of "we just followed what the judge told us, Australia/EU/whoever else is bad" will take months
So now that Tim Cook is gone will we see John Ternus actually apply some braincells to this?
They’re just going to keep losing. And every time they fight they make it worse. They had a chance to get off way easier years ago. They destroyed it by fighting tooth and nail.
I don’t want any of those features myself, I don’t think. Small chance at side-loading.
But everyone, even diehard Apple pundits, realized long ago this was a very stupid hill to die on.
This is disappointing to see. Apple has invested billions of dollars into building the iPhone and part of its business model is having a central App Store. Instead of trying to encourage other phone manufactures to compete, they are forcing there to be competition within Apple's own ecosystem they created. Apple built their hole platform which is why they are able to make choices on how it works.
It is punishing Apple for building too great of a product.
If Apple's business model requires preventing their users from using the device they bought as they want, and overcharging commissions on software built by third parties, their business model is wrong.
I'd be sympathetic to this argument in 2008. Apple has made hay. On the slider between "incentives for entrepreneurs" and "good for the people", you've bent the metal at one end.
Having (alt store) presence in Australia, Brazil, EU and Japan is in fact more than enough for many indies - one can even begin to imagine ignoring the US as a region.
First, Apple does not follow the same rules they set for developers.
Second, Apple does not treat all developers equally. We have functionality we’re unable to offer to iOS users.
The same feature, including technical implementation mechanism, is available in Claude and Gemini. It’s unfair.
Installing something is a perfectly normal operation - it's the App Store that's the special case :).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_neutrality
I guess Apple prefered the pejorative "sideloading"
Lets call it what it is.
[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Bluetoo...
[1] https://dz0ny.github.io/5r-mini-ble-tool/
As someone from that region, this is probably a good idea for all parties, right now. I'm not fond of our current trajectory, and the outside pressure to change isn't sounding unreasonable.
Combine with that other markets also getting bigger like South America.
The reality is that NA had their smartphone / mobile boom already and the rest of the world is still catching up. There are more smartphones, apps, features, services, etc. to be gained by selling to the massive influx of new customers versus trying to cater to the old audience of North America.
In the vast majority of cases, Asia and SA won't touch your product if you don't have deep familiarity with their markets, their idiosyncrasies and have a competitive business model there. Getting folks in these markets to pay isn't easy, friend.
And that's why we keep having these conversations in English on a US site about products made by US companies.
Right now we have a relatively high confidence that as long as the devices are not jailbroken and are kept up to date they are relatively secure.
What this change means for people like me is that either there is some capability to detect whether third-party app stores are in use on a device and we will set a policy that disallows anyone using such things from accessing company data/services, or we have to lock out the devices altogether.
Personal devices shouldn't be used for work purposes to begin with. If work has security requirements regarding what phone and what condition it is in, they better be supplying their own phone to ensure those requirements are satisfied.
No, they don't benefit (cause it means they check work mail on weekends or evenings), but their employer do...
> Moreover, because iOS apps are sandboxed, as implemented in other jurisdictions, apps available through alternative distribution will be sandboxed, which further strengthens security and reduces the likelihood that any app will compromise other apps [...]
On the contrary, it allows app and payment security to be better than what Apple offers.
So notarisation is still on the table? I won't be surprised to see Apple using that for all the loophole its worth.
That is, unless that's already covered by the ruling and I just didn't see it while skimming. Maybe the Alternative Distribution Channels is that, although it doesn't seem to be defined beyond 'a suitably qualified third party', which I'm sure Apple would love to say is no-one.
Still, the rest of it is very nice. The altstores for Apple have seemed kind of useless to me just through either costing money to use or needing to connect to a PC every so often, or needing to perform some other stupid dance. If we can get the F-Droid of iOS and an option to just download and install an IPA if I want to, then I'll be pretty happy.
The nuance is the Online Safety Act 2021 does not have an "app distribution blocking notice" or "app blacklisting notice" or similar, therefore, I think the effect is Apple can't stop a Russian website distributing apps to Australian users who seek them out, but Apple can use a received "app removal notice" to then blacklist the relevant app on existing devices?
[1] https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2021A00076/latest/text
That has already happened on several occasions (Apple refusing notarisation, since you still need to be a member of their Developer Program thus subject to their ToS and all the crazy in it).
Hopefully, the next revision of EU's DMA and equivalent in other countries will close the loop hole.
Or maybe... John Ternus would wake up one day and decide to be a better human being and just fix this globally for everyone.
/s
Payment fees for App Store apps seem to be affected in section 9(c) - I have trouble parsing it but it seem to eliminate any fee difference between purchasing physical goods through an app (currently 0% fee) and digital goods (currently 30% fee). There's a carve out for "reasonable costs" for hosting and distributing the digital goods - this could be sensible in certain scenarios (like Netflix asking Apple to a free CDN for them).
We'll see how much malicious compliance the above produces. Otherwise I'm feeling like a happy Aussie today :)
If the rules are good enough for Apple, they are good enough for everyone.
This might sound like a defence of Apple, and to a small extent it is. But actually, I’m being deadly serious. I think the world would be a better place if these rules applied to everyone.
“But poor Nintendo” rings as hollow to me as “but poor Apple” probably does to you.
I think the legal side of it is, once a precedent like this stands, the cost of going after others reduces significantly. One could argue Nintendo created a closed market for Nintendo apps and abuses their monopoly power in a completely analogous way, and ask the court for completely analogous recourse.
A _better_ solution though would be legislation around freedoms and rights for general purpose computing on any general purpose computing device, rights to repair owned hardware, rights to "own" software paid for, etc. Then you wouldn't need to rely on any monopoly-abuse arguments. The powers that be would have to give up their control (e.g. governments like the notorization thing because they can ask Apple to stop something they consider harmful from being distributed easily, but the requirement to seek notorization clashes with what I perceive as my right to run any program I want on any computer I own) and to be fair having some way to protect the (non-techie) public from malicious software is a reasonable goal (where we could argue over different solutions).
Apple is the largest abuser that I can think of. If anyone else approaches their damages, I trust that they will be treated accordingly.
Beach's ruling determined that Apple should not be allowed to block, as a policy, competing app stores. Beach also recognised that Apple's commission is not merely a payment-processing fee, but a means of recovering its investment in the broader ecosystem, including developer tools, security, app verification, distribution infrastructure and intellectual property. He also acknowledged Apple's entitlement to a commercial return on those investments.
The question remains how Apple can get the commercial return which Beach acknowledged Apple is entitled to, given the weirdly arbitrary restrictions defined in Beach's order. This contradiction is left unresolved and is begging for an obvious overturn on appeal.
I personally have no problem with competing stores, so long as they're not just a mechanism for redirecting money previously going to Apple into their own pocket. But this ruling doesn't establish competition, because there's not competitive reason for alternative stores to exist except to avoid fees which Beach acknowledged Apple is entitled to.
The way this should work is that Apple can charge whatever they want for whatever they want but then nobody can be required to use them instead of a third party. So if they want to charge 30% to distribute your app then that's fine, but then you have the option of having someone else distribute your app to customers with iOS (or hosting it yourself), in which case Apple gets 0%.
At which point they might want to get e.g. 5% of something rather than 30% of nothing.
I agree, the end effect should be them charging say "5% of something" and the developer choosing not to bother thinking about external payments. They seem to avoiding this outcome on purpose though. (I dare say Apple might prefer to chase advertising revenue from the app store rather than accept small fees, but they'd risk trashing their own garden).
I have a reasonable amount of confidence in Apple's due diligence around vetting apps on the app store. I can't think of another major brand that I would trust on this matter.
You should try submitting an app on the app store just to prove to yourself how not true this is. Even in the AI era. They do vet, but it's not as substantial as you think
How is that unlike developing an attachment to/sympathy for your captors?
m'okay bye.
Seriously, what are you trying to accomplish by saying this? Do you think you or app developers have any leverage with Apple? A corp that's the size of several countries?
We need choices and alternative options.
I don't have a super strong opinion here. I lean a bit more towards thinking that the current status is better than the alternative: Based on what I see in news / tech news / in general it sounds like "the price of apps"* is less of a problem in today's day and age than "app _X_ tracks every thing you do and your location, sells that data and now [elections are skewed | supermarkets implement dynamic pricing | ICE can track you], etc".
* I am aware that is more than "price of apps", I'm simplifying a bit here. I'm not a fan of Apple imposing restrictions on how you can purchase stuff.
Or hell, anybody from AU should really spin up a tech company or build a phone
Where? Apple and Google are a cosy cartel engineered to never let you out.
An Open Source / Free Software Only app store on iOS which only allowed reproducible builds would be so much better than the iOS app store for security.
I would trust that so much more, and I feel like anyone even marginally technically competent would too.
If Mozilla made its own app distribution platform for Firefox and Thunderbird, I'd also naturally trust that.
At this point, I do not trust apple at all. The iOS app store sells ads. If I search for my bank's name, a different bank comes up as the first result.
If you search 'Ledger Bitcoin Wallet' on the app store, someone who pays more for the ad slot can present you with a crypto stealer (which has happened in the past! the app store review didn't catch that obvious bullshit).
The app store's "due diligence" and "vetting" all went out the window as soon as they started selling the top search spot to the highest bidder.
Its similar with apple, I have the reasonable assumption that whatever I install from the app store is not going to brick my phone, steal my data or be a giant resource hog that just runs in the background.
However, the looming threat of that being possible, and Apple not being able to block it from happening, will hopefully prevent Apple from making the App Store experience worse than it needs to be, both from the user's perspective, and the publisher's perspective.
Chances of my aging parents installing an alt store and getting duped are slim to none.
You have a CHOICE now
AppStore is filled to the brim with scam apps. See https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/9/9.html
I want to run so my agents have a local sandbox on device.
https://www.fedcourt.gov.au/law-and-practice/appeals/from-co...
> * Who hears appeals? *
> Usually a Full Court of three or more Judges sitting together will hear an appeal. However, appeals from a judgment of a Judge of the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia or from a Court of summary jurisdiction will be heard by a single judge unless a judge considers that it is appropriate for the appeal to be heard by a Full Court.
The ruling is pretty clear that malicious compliance won't be accepted. There's a whole section on all the things apple isn't allowed to do to get around this ruling, starting with this:
> the first respondent must not (including by procuring any act of any related corporation) prohibit, prevent or take any action (including by imposing a fee or condition) which is likely to hinder users of iOS devices from discovering, obtaining and updating iOS apps, including alternative app stores, via Alternative Distribution Channels, or from using iOS apps obtained in that way on iOS devices, or prohibit, prevent or take any action (including by imposing a fee or condition) which is likely to hinder app developers from distributing and updating such iOS apps to such users via Alternative Distribution Channels, ...
Who do you suppose is the primary entity responsible for making it so that you haven't been able to do this on iOS using the variety of open source and proprietary third party development tools that people use on platforms like Linux and Windows?
Of course, this will never happen, it's Apple... they can't even spell competition let alone "libre".
If they want to charge for an SDK, they have to invest some money to make it feel that we're paying for something.
I like how the court’s declarations are punchy, factual, and dare I say obvious. I’d suggest giving section 1 a read.
There’s going to be a million “what ifs”, from walled gardens to security to ‘you don’t have to use iOS’, but it’s blatantly obvious this is all about competition and money.
It’s anticompetitive, illegal, and the remedy is to cease these anticompetitive actions.
The ruling is consistent with Australian law and precedented in European and Japanese courts. Nothing about this is payback or suggests unfair or biased ruling. You need a better coping mechanism if your only outlet for disagreement is pearl-clutching on an American tech website.
You did this a week ago in the other Apple thread, writing indefensible nonsense about Apple manufacturing their own memory fabs. Do you have any factual contribution to make to these conversations? If you're going to write hysterical nonsense, can you at least defend it in the replies so we understand your perspective?
Will I install an app from a third party store? Hell no lol.
Good. Apple can't say "I don't like your app because [vague reasons], it's not allowed on the App Store so nobody can use it".
> "...provided those iOS apps have undergone an automated scan for genuine security and/or privacy reasons and been notarised by Apple or a suitably qualified third party (Alternative Distribution Channels)..."
Seems bad, can't Apple say "I refuse to notarise your app for 'security' [vague reasons]"?
Or does the cryptographic signatures Apple presumably gives an app uploaded to the App Store count as "notarised"? I'm picturing the following situation:
- January: Alice uploads to App Store, Apple produces a signature S of H(app), Alice downloads the bytes of S
- February: Apple says "Alice we're kicking your app out of the App Store for [vague reasons]"
- March: Alice says "Fine, then I'll put it on Bob's Alternate Appstore." Apple says "I refuse to 'notarise' your app for 'security' [vague reasons]". Alice then uploads her app to Bob's Alternate Appstore along with Apple's cryptographic signature S that Bob authenticates against a known Apple public key.
Now there are two contradictory narratives about whether Alice is notarised.
- (a) Apple says "I refuse to notarise Alice, therefore she's not notarised."
- (b) Alice says "S exists, here are its bytes, the hash and signature validate, therefore I'm notarised."
Presumably if (a) wins, Apple would be within its legal rights to block Bob's Alternate Appstore because it allowed Alice to upload an un-notarised app. This would make the whole ruling effectively toothless, because Apple still gets a veto, the veto is just renamed to "notarisation."
If (b) wins, it provides clarity for developers. In this world signing an app is effectively a no-takesies-backsies moment: Once S is published, Alice knows for sure she's notarised forever. Apple won't later be able to block Alice on a whim by hiding behind a vague "security" excuse.
Which narrative wins?
If (b) wins it seems like there's an opportunity here to create tooling for Alice to pull the S for her app on the app store as soon as it's approved. Maybe someone should spin up an observatory to constantly download S for every app as it's uploaded to the app store -- the observatory would be able to rescue Alice if she didn't have the foresight to download S herself before Apple banned her app.
(Lines starting with > are quotes from OP PDF)
Just do it worldwide. I go regularly between AU and HK and sorry but it'd be ridiculous half of functionality works in one but not the other
> 4. Subject to orders 12 and 13, the first respondent must not (including by procuring any act of any related corporation) prohibit, prevent or take any action (including by imposing a fee or condition) which is likely to hinder users of iOS devices from discovering, obtaining and updating iOS apps, including alternative app stores, via Alternative Distribution Channels, or from using iOS apps obtained in that way on iOS devices, or prohibit, prevent or take any action (including by imposing a fee or condition) which is likely to hinder app developers from distributing and updating such iOS apps to such users via Alternative Distribution Channels, including but not limited to: ..
Then it goes on to list all the ways Apple isn't allowed to quietly break 3rd party app stores - like, they can't make developers or users pay money to use them. They can't restrict which APIs are allowed to be used via 3rd party stores. They can't require that people who publish apps in the official store remove their apps from 3rd party stores. And so on.
Unfortunately, I still expect Apple to invent new ways to circumvent that :( But really good on court's part.
They’re just going to keep losing. And every time they fight they make it worse. They had a chance to get off way easier years ago. They destroyed it by fighting tooth and nail.
I don’t want any of those features myself, I don’t think. Small chance at side-loading.
But everyone, even diehard Apple pundits, realized long ago this was a very stupid hill to die on.
It is punishing Apple for building too great of a product.